52 Games Challenge 2025!!!

[telly]

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (PS4) - 40 Hours

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is a game that I enjoyed quite a bit even though it definitely has flaws. First, the game has this impressive and beautiful art style that captured me the entire time I was playing that's set perfectly by an incredible score and an immense overworld with lots of secrets and enemies to fight and treasures to uncover. The animations done by Studio Ghibli also created a really nice experience that fit the graphics really well.

I also really enjoyed the gameplay. I actually liked the mixture of turn based in real time combat it reminded me a lot of Kingdom Hearts and I found it to be very exciting and fun with the right mixture of strategy and action. I didn't know that it was going to be based on Pokémon, but once I learned all of the mechanics it was really enjoyable to create a team for all of my party members equip them and boost their stats and picking the right familiar to bring to any given situation it was really fun to experiment with all of those different features including the alchemy mechanic, and all of the different side quests and bounty hunts that you can do to pass the time in between the story missions.

Some aspects of the gameplay that I didn't like was the fact that your companions aren't very smart, and there aren’t a lot of ways to set their actions in battle unless you take control of them directly. They usually make really stupid decisions and die way too frequently. I also found the game to be pretty frustratingly difficult when it came to normal encounters and I died quite a few times just from fighting your typical set of enemies. In contrast, I was able to finish every boss fight on the first time because it's a lot easier to fight one enemy than a group of three, and Drippy your companion fairy often tells you exactly what you need to do to beat the boss which kind of took a lot of the challenge out of it.

By far my least favorite aspect of Ni No Kuni was the story. It's overall a very simple story that airs more on the childish side than mature, even though there are some themes in the game that are very serious. I was hoping that the setup of the game, where in the young main character tragically loses their mom, would be a great foundation for some interesting storytelling. Oliver barely shows any grief or sorrow at the loss of his mom and just continues like nothing happened.

The villains are also super cliché, and this is one of those RPGs where the whole premise of the villains’ motives are based on destroying a corrupt world but their reasons for doing so are flimsy at best. There’s barely any conflict, greed, corruption, or… like… anything evil going on at all in the world, beyond what’s being directly injected into the people by the villains themselves. It just wasn't very compelling or well executed in my opinion. There are also tons of plot holes and inconsistencies due to the mishandling of multiple messy and complicated story elements like time travel, dual souls for each character, and multiple worlds. On that later point, I didn't really like the shifting between both the real world and the fantasy world because Motorville just wasn’t very interesting. Certain storylines also had a lot of artificial padding which felt very frustrating.

In summary even though I didn't enjoy the story very much at all, the game is beautiful and fun to play, and those numerous hours of just exploring the world and fighting monsters and leveling up and doing side quests was enough to keep me enjoyed for quite a long time.

[bikingjahuty]

55. Dead or Alive 5: Last Round (PS4)

2025 is certainly shaping up to be the year of Dead or Alive for me. This year alone I've played through the majority of the franchise, at least belonging to the fighting genre, and honestly I'm having so much fun that I'll likely play another two, maybe even three DOA games before we hit the end of the year. But anyhow, this time I got to return to DOA5, and entry I haven't touched since around the time it came out in 2012. I remember thinking DOA5 was a good game back on the PS3, but I guess I forgot just how good it was since aside from going out with my wife for a while this afternoon and taking our dogs on a walk, I pretty much played this game all day long. After I'd finished Story Mode, I then played arcade mode with nearly every character in DOA5's impressive roster before fiddling around with a handful of other modes too. In short, this is a fun as hell fighting game and another excellently crafted game in this criminally underrated franchise.


DOA5's gameplay is tight, fast paced, and fun. Like many previous DOA games, it is very combo focused and being successful at this game is very dependent on your ability to rack up crazy combos and pull off combo chains. Chip damaging your opponent can work to an extent, but you'll really want to stun lock your opponent and continue to pummel them with DOA5's impressive array of moves that each character posseses. There is a lot of depth to be found in DOA5, but some of that depth is lost in the flashiness of this game, which while it makes for an entertaining experience, it probably detracts somewhat from this game being as competitive as some of its late 2000s/early 2010s rivals. DOA5 Last Round's roster is very impressive with it containing a ton of DOA characters, but also several characters from Ninja Gaiden and also SEGA's Virtua Fighter. Even Mai for the King of Fighterrs series is playable, assuming you purchased her as paid DLC. Unfortunately, even though this is the final, presumably ultimate version of DOA5, there is still surprisingly a lot of costumes and several characters that you don't get by default. Holding back content as DLC in fightng games has been abused way worse in various other fighting games since DOA5's release, but it still annoys me every time I see it. Luckily, there are still a bunch of costumes to unlock by completing various modes and challenges within DOA5. There is also a pretty robust story mode which will cover the events following DOA4. While it's nothing groundbreaking or riveting, it's still entertaining and fills you in on the DOA universe.


DOA5 Last Round's presentation is excellent. Character models have been updated from their DOA4 counterparts to look slightly less animeish and a bit more realistic. Gravity defying jiggle physics are still as crazy as ever, and the majority of the female roster is still scantily clad in many of their outfits, but they all look and move a little more realistic compared to previous entries. Male characters have also been updated and look better than they ever have in DOA5. There is also some pretty cool perspiration and dirt effects that occur during each mach that make characters look like they've been getting a workout while fighting, as well as maybe getting knocked to the ground one too many times. This definitely makes DOA5 Last Round one of the best looking fighting games of its time and one that still looks pretty impressive even today. DOA5's stages encompass some of my favorite and least favorite in the franchise. Certain stages are absolutely awesome and over the top as you'd expect them to be in a game that allows you to knock your opponent off a ledge or through a wall as they fall 40 feet to the ground below. There are a few stages like the Oil Rig however, which are boring and unremarkable in nearly every way. Luckily, the goos stages definitely outweigh the bad ones, making DOA5 a blast to play no matter what level you're fighting in.


Finally, DOA5's audio is pretty good for the most part. The Japanese voice actors are absolutely better than the english ones, but that's not to say there isn't some talent on the English side of things as well. There aren't any egregiously bad performances, and while the dialogue is often cheesy and melodramatic, it's all pretty entertaining thanks to that aforementioned voice acting. The OST is good as well, with some new tracks being combined with various classic DOA songs as well. I'm definitely more of a fan of those older songs they included, but the new tracks are mostly enjoyable as well, maybe minus a couple. Sound effects of punches, slamming characters to the ground, hitting an energy forcefield, or some other explosive object all sound great and really give a weight to the combat of DOA5. The audio is awesome and I have few complaints about it.


At the end of the day, I felt torn about whether I prefer DOA4 or DOA5 Last Round as my favorite DOA game. Both games look, sound, and play very well, and are highly entertaining. However, I felt like I connected just a tiny biy more with DOA5 which is why, at least for now, it's my favorite DOA game. I cannot stress how enjoyable and crazy the DOA games are, and its a series I have come to love and appreciate more and more this year as I've spent a good chunk of time with each installment. There are still a few DOA games that could give DOA5 Last Round a run for its money, but it's going to be hard to beat, that's for sure! (4/26/25) [37/50]